President Lee represented ICID at the launch of the partnership for agricultural water in Africa co-chaired by the African Development Bank (Aly Abou Sabaa), World Bank (Salah Darghouth) and NEPAD (Amadou Allahoury Diallo) on 29 March 2008. As well as representatives from the organisations chairing the meeting, IFAD, FAO, IPTRID, ICID, ARID, KfW, GtZ, JICA, IWMI, the Spanish Corporation, the French government and others also participated.
Reiterating ICID's primary role in ''Managing water for sustainable agriculture'', ICID's ''preference for Africa'' was highlighted by President Lee; this was manifest in ICID's action to invite two African initiatives, ARID and SARIA, to attend Council meetings annually. ICID could organise a regional meeting in November 2007 in Johannesburg, South Africa, focusing on ''Contribution of rainfed and irrigated agriculture to poverty alleviation through increased productivity in Africa''. As an international NGO, ICID constitutes a peer group which in the context of Africa sees irrigation as not just about pipes and canals, but managing soil moisture by any means. This includes drainage, runoff farming and informal systems of irrigation and multiple use which were particularly relevant to giving access to agricultural water for the poor. ICID also provides the secretariat for the liaison committee with professional organisations in the water sector as a whole.
This broad view of irrigation and the focus on pro-poor objectives was important in order to win support for agricultural water management in Africa; in this regard one needs to distinguish the objectives which were concerned primarily with family food security and rural livelihoods from the other objective concerning national food security, for which governance of land and water and the competition for resources could be more critical.
This differentiation was implicit in the thematic structure of the next World Water Forum for which ICID was leading the topic on ''Water and agriculture for ending poverty and hunger'' and participating in the allied topic dealing with ''Multiple use of water systems'', both under the theme ''Addressing human development and the MDGs''.
It was suggested that this focus on pro-poor objectives is distinct from the focus on competition for water and productive objectives implicit in the topic ''Ensuring adequate resources to meet agricultural, urban and energy needs'', covered under a different theme. Understanding this difference would help to avoid earlier problems with irrigation development in the continent, which had tended to expect these objectives to converge more quickly than was practicable.
ICID had a separate but complementary role in the partnership in generating additional peer-group support for the work of the various development agencies in Africa.
Other organisations stressed, among other things, that the needs of agriculture had to be seen in the overall context of water security for all -there was no single approach; and also the need to ''mobilise'' water to fight rural poverty and this included support for dams. JICA announced their enhanced Africa rice development initiative to promote both lowland and upland rice production. KfW questioned why projects had become smaller. IFAD pointed out that in general, agriculture had not done well. Often the ministries concerned were not investmentorientated, and the water and sanitation sector had captured the MDGs. More advocacy was needed to keep agricultural water in the picture.
World Bank suggested the formulation of a coordinating task force that would meet again in six months to work on three fronts, later expanded to include a fourth: (a) Harmonisation, not only between partners but also within the countries with more dialogue between ministries of finance, agriculture and water. (b) Knowledge sharing and innovation, in which adaptation to climate change would provide the initial focus IRRIGATION AND DRAINAGE